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This week I’m loving … Google+ hangouts

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to be involved in a Google+ hangout between my sister’s 1st class group (6/7 year olds) in Tipperary and Michael Thornton’s kindergarten group (5 year olds) in Charlottesville in Virginia. This was our second hangout – we’d had a previous one in November that also included Mary Jo Bell’s senior infants group (5/6 year olds) in Dublin. In both of the hangouts we had great fun chatting about school start and end times and uniforms or lack of them among other things.

The Irish classes taught the class in the US some Irish sayings and in the hangout last Thursday we say songs and danced. The singing was completely out of sync as the classes on both sides of the Atlantic gave their all as we sang ‘Jingle Bells’🙂 We finished the hangout with the class in the US teaching us their morning dance. Seeing them all dancing together was an image that I held on to as I heard of the horror that had taken place in Newtown in Connecticut on Friday.

It’s really difficult to do justice to how much the classes enjoy the 15-20 minute conversations over a Google+ hangout. It’s such an easy way to connect classes across the globe or even just up the road. As a way of continuing the relationship we are looking at other ways to connect in between hangouts. We’ve begun this process by making Pixengo’s in Tipperary of Irish expressions which we’ve shared. We have another hangout planned for after the holidays and I for one am really looking forward to it🙂